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‘The Watergate’ Review: An Ediﬁce on the Potomac

At the height of the scandal that bears its name, the Watergate Hotel was losing $4,000 a month in stolen, monogrammed towels. Garrett M. Graff reviews ‘The Watergate’ by Joseph Rodota.

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Garrett M. Graff

March 7, 2018 6:42 p.m. ET

Watergate didn’t just shake the firmament of politics, redefining political scandal for future public figures. It became the very language of scandal itself. Today, the simple addition of the suffix “–gate” is one of the easiest ways to hyperbolize any controversy—from “Travelgate” in the early Clinton years to “Deflategate” on the football field to “Memogate” in Washington this winter.

Often overlooked, as Joseph Rodota recounts in “The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address,” is that the Watergate is also a building....